Professor Adrian Bell at the CFA Middle East Investment Conference

The large fine imposed on RBS last week suggests that a ‘scandal’ took place in the banking world over the setting of LIBOR. Yes – there was probably systematic mis-pricing of LIBOR which enabled some traders and some banks to profit at the expense of others. But the LIBOR issue simply highlights a much wider problem in financial markets which is that many ‘prices’ quoted in markets are not market prices at all. Instead they are prices based on computer models, matrix pricing or sheer guesswork, which may or may not produce ‘accurate’ prices. The reason for using computers models and guesswork is that in many financial products there actually are no transactions at all or very few even over periods of some weeks or months and thus no market prices.

The University of Reading and Henley Business School’s commitment to increasing student mobility internationally has led to the launch of a new BSc in Finance and Management in collaboration with the University of Venice starting in September 2015.

Dr Ioannis Oikonomou and Professor Chris Brooks’ work on the connection between firm sustainability and the pricing of corporate bonds was recently honoured with the Outstanding Publication Award from the Financial Review academic journal.